Our Sexual Ethics

Bertrand Russell, 1936

I

SEX, MORE THAN
any other element in human life, is still viewed by many,
perhaps by most, in an irrational way. Homicide, pestilence, insanity,
gold and precious stones - all the things, in fact, that are the objects of
passionate hopes or fears - have been seen, in the past, through a mist of
magic or mythology; but the sun of reason has now dispelled the mist,
except here and there. The densest cloud that remains is in the territory
of sex, as is perhaps natural since sex is concerned in the most
passionate part of most people's lives.

It is becoming apparent, however, that conditions in the modern
world are working to effect a change in the public attitude toward sex.
As to what change, or changes, this will bring about, no one can speak
with any certainty; but it is possible to note some of the forces now at
work, and to discuss what their results are likely to be upon the
structure of society.

Insofar as human nature is concerned, it cannot be said to be
impossible to produce a society in which there is very little sexual
intercourse outside of marriage. The conditions necessary for this
result, however, are such as are made almost unattainable by modern
life. Let us, then, consider what they are.

The greatest influence toward effecting monogamy is immobility
in a region containing few inhabitants. If a man hardly
ever has occasion to leave home, and seldom sees any woman
but his wife, it is easy for him to be faithful; but if he travels
without her, or lives in a crowded urban community, the
problem is proportionately more difficult. The next greatest assistance to
monogamy is superstition: those who genuinely believe that 'sin' leads
to eternal punishment might be expected to avoid it, and to some extent
they do so, although not to so great an extent as might be expected.
The third support of virtue is public opinion. Where, as in agricultural
societies, all that a man does is known to his neighbours, he has
powerful motives for avoiding whatever convention condemns. But all
these causes of correct behaviour are much less potent than they used
to be. Fewer people live in isolation; the belief in hell-fire is dying out;
and in large towns no one knows what his neighbour does. It is,
therefore, not surprising that both men and women are less
monogamous than they were before the rise of modern industrialism.

Of course, it may be said that, while an increasing number of people
fail to observe the moral law, that is no reason for altering our
standards. Those who sin, we are sometimes told, should know and
recognize that they sin, and an ethical code is none the worse for being
difficult to live up to. But I should reply that the question whether a
code is good or bad is the same as the question whether or not it
promotes human happiness. Many adults, in their hearts, still believe all
that they were taught in childhood, and feel wicked when their lives do
not conform to the maxims of the Sunday school. The harm done is not
merely to introduce a division between the conscious reasonable
personality and the unconscious infantile personality; the harm lies also
in the fact that the valid parts of conventional morality become
discredited along with the invalid parts, and it comes to be thought that,
if adultery is excusable, so are laziness, dishonesty, and unkindness.
This danger is inseparable from a system which teaches the young, en
bloc, a number of beliefs that they are almost sure to discard when they
become mature. In the process of social and economic revolt, they are
likely to throw over the good along with the bad.

The difficulty of arriving at a workable sexual ethic arises from the
conflict between the impulse to jealousy and the impulse to polygamy.
There is no doubt that jealousy, while in part instinctive, is to a very
large degree conventional. In
societies in which a man is considered a fit object for ridicule
if his wife
is unfaithful, he will be jealous where she is concerned, even if he no
longer has any affection for her. Thus jealousy is intimately connected
with the sense of property, and is much less where this sense is absent.
If faithfulness is no part of what is conventionally expected, jealousy is
much diminished. But although there is more possibility of lessening
jealousy than many people suppose, there are very definite limits so
long as fathers have rights and duties. So long as this is the case, it is
inevitable that men should desire some assurance that they are the
fathers of their wives' children. If women are to have sexual freedom,
fathers must fade out, and wives must no longer expect to be supported
by their husbands. This may come about in time, but it will be a
profound social change, and its effects, for good or ill, are incalculable.

In the meantime, if marriage and paternity are to survive as social
institutions, some compromise is necessary between complete
promiscuity and life-long monogamy. To decide on the best
compromise at any given moment is not easy; and the decision should
vary from time to time, according to the habits of the population and
the reliability of birth-control methods. Some things, however, can be
said with some definiteness.

In the first place, it is undesirable, both physiologically and
educationally, that women should have children before the age of
20. Our ethics should, therefore, be such as to make this a rare occurrence.

In the second place, it is unlikely that a person without previous
sexual experience, whether man or woman, will be able to distinguish
between mere physical attraction and the sort of congeniality that is
necessary in order to make marriage a success. Moreover, economic
causes compel men, as a rule, to postpone marriage, and it is neither
likely that they will remain chaste in the years from 20 to 30, nor
desirable psychologically that they should do so; but it is much better
that, if they have temporary relations, that they should be not with
professionals, but with girls of their own class, whose motive is
affection rather than money. For both these reasons, young
unmarried people should have considerable freedom as long as children
are avoided.

In the third place, divorce should be possible without blame to either
party, and should not be regarded as in any way disgraceful. A
childless marriage should be terminable at the wish of one of the
partners, and any marriage should be terminable by mutual consent - a
year's notice being necessary in either case. Divorce should, of course,
be possible on a number of other grounds - insanity, desertion, cruelty,
and so on; but mutual consent should be the most usual ground.

In the fourth place, everything possible should be done to free sexual
relations from the economic taint. At present, wives, just as much as
prostitutes, live by the sale of their sexual charms; and even in
temporary free relations the man is usually expected to bear all the joint
expenses. The result is that there is a sordid entanglement of money
with sex, and that women's motives not infrequently have a mercenary
element. Sex, even when blessed by the Church, ought not to be a
profession. It is right that a woman should be paid for housekeeping or
cooking or the care of children, but not merely for having sexual
relations with a man. Nor should a woman who has once loved and been
loved by a man be able to live ever after on alimony when his love and
hers have ceased. A woman, like a man, should work for her living, and
an idle wife is no more intrinsically worthy of respect than a gigolo.

II

Two very primitive impulses have contributed, though in very
different degrees, to the rise of the currently accepted code of sexual
behaviour. One of these is modesty, and the other, as mentioned above,
is jealousy. Modesty, in some form and to some degree, is almost
universal in the human race, and constitutes a taboo which must only
be broken through in accordance with certain forms and ceremonies, or,
at the least, in conformity with some recognized etiquette. Not
everything may he seen, and not all facts may be mentioned. This is
not, as some moderns suppose, an invention of the Victorian age; on
the contrary, anthropologists have found the most elaborate forms of
prudery among primitive savages. The conception of the obscene has
its roots deep in human nature. We may go against it from a love of
rebellion, or from loyalty to the scientific spirit, or from a wish to feel
wicked, such as existed in Byron; but we do not thereby eradicate it
from among our natural impulses. No doubt convention determines, in a
given community, exactly what is to be considered indecent, but the
universal existence of some convention of the kind is conclusive
evidence of a source which is not merely conventional. In almost every
human society, pornography and exhibitionism are reckoned as
offences, except when, as not infrequently occurs, they form part of
religious ceremonies.

Asceticism - which may or may not have a psychological connection
with modesty - is an impulse which seems to arise only where a certain
level of civilization has been reached, but may then become powerful. It
is not to be found in the earlier books of the Old Testament, but it
appears in the later books, in the Apocrypha, and in the New Testament.
Similarly among the Greeks there is little of it in early times, but more and
more as time goes on. In India, it arose at a very early date, and acquired
great intensity. I will not attempt to give a psychological analysis of its
origin, but I cannot doubt that it is a spontaneous sentiment, existing, to
some slight extent, in almost all civilized human beings. Its faintest form
is reluctance to imagine a revered individual - especially a person
possessed of religious sanctity - engaged in love-making, which is felt to
be scarcely compatible with the highest degree of dignity. The wish to
free the spirit from bondage to the flesh has inspired many of the great
religions of the world, and is still powerful even among modern
intellectuals.

But jealousy, I believe, has been the most potent single factor in the
genesis of sexual morality. Jealousy instinctively rouses anger; and
anger, rationalized, becomes moral disapproval. The purely instinctive
motive must have been reinforced, at an early stage in the development
of civilization, by the desire of males to be certain of paternity. Without
security in this respect the patriarchal family would have been
impossible, and fatherhood,
with all its economic implications, could not have become the basis of
social institutions. It was, accordingly, wicked to have relations with
another man's wife, but not even mildly reprehensible to have relations
with an unmarried woman. There were excellent practical reasons for
condemning the adulterer, since he caused confusion and very likely
bloodshed. The siege of Troy was an extreme example of the upheavals
due to disrespect for the rights of husbands, but something of the sort,
though on a smaller scale, was to be expected even when the parties
concerned were less exalted. There were, of course, in those days, no
corresponding rights of wives; a husband had no duty to his wife,
though he had the duty of respecting the property of other husbands.

The old system of the patriarchal family, with an ethic based on the
feelings that we have been considering, was, in a sense, successful:
men, who dominated, had considerable liberty, and women, who
suffered, were in such complete subjection that their unhappiness
seemed not important. It is the claim of women to equality with men that
has done most to make a new system necessary in the world today.
Equality can be secured in two ways: either by exacting from men the
same strict monogamy as was, in the past, exacted from women; or by
allowing women, equally with men, a certain relaxation of the traditional
code. The first of these ways was preferred by most of the pioneers of
women's rights, and is still preferred by the churches; but the second
has many more adherents in practice, although most of them are in
doubt as to the theoretical justifiability of their own behaviour. And
those who recognize that some new ethic is required find it difficult to
know just what its precepts should be.

There is another source of novelty, and that is the effect of the
scientific outlook in weakening the taboo on sexual knowledge. It has
come to be understood that various evils - for example, venereal disease -
cannot be effectively combated unless they are spoken of much more
openly than was formerly thought permissible; and it has also been
found that reticence and ignorance are apt to have injurious effects
upon the psychology of the individual. Both sociology and
psychoanalysis have led
serious students to deprecate the policy of silence in regard to sexual
matters, and many practical educators, from experience with children,
have adopted the same position. Those who have a scientific outlook
on human behaviour, moreover, find it impossible to label any action as
'sin'; they realize that what we do has its origin in our heredity, our
education, and our environment, and that it is by control of these
causes, rather than by denunciation, that conduct injurious to society is
to be prevented.

In seeking a new ethic of sexual behaviour, therefore, we must not
ourselves be dominated by the ancient irrational passions which gave
rise to the old ethic, though we should recognize that they may, by
accident, have led to some sound maxims, and that, since they still exist,
though perhaps in a weakened form, they are still among the data of our
problem. What we have to do positively is to ask ourselves what moral
rules are most likely to promote human happiness, remembering always
that, whatever the rules may be, they are not likely to be universally
observed. That is to say, we have to consider the effect which the rules
will in fact have, not that which they would have if they were
completely effective.

III

Let us look next at the question of knowledge on sexual subjects,
which arises at the earliest age and is the least difficult and doubtful of
the various problems with which we are concerned. There is no sound
reason, of any sort or kind, for concealing facts when talking to
children. Their questions should be answered and their curiosity
satisfied in exactly the same way in regard to sex as in regard to the
habits of fishes, or any other subject that interests them. There should
be no sentiment, because young children cannot feel as adults do, and
see no occasion for high-flown talk. It is a mistake to begin with the
loves of the bees and the flowers; there is no point in leading up to the
facts of life by devious routes. The child who is told what he wants to
know, and allowed to see his parents naked, will have no pruriency and
no obsession of a sexual kind. Boys
who are brought up in official ignorance think and talk much more
about sex than boys who have always heard this topic treated on a level
with any other. Official ignorance and actual knowledge teach them to
be deceitful and hypocritical with their elders. On the other hand, real
ignorance, when it is achieved, is likely to be a source of shock and
anxiety, and to make adaptation to real life difficult. All ignorance is
regrettable, but ignorance on so important a matter as sex is a serious
danger.

When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean
that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should
be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to
represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring
only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when,
as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents
have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to
them. There are facts which I should not obtrude upon a child, but I
would tell him anything sooner than say what is not true. Virtue which
is based upon a false view of the facts is not real virtue. Speaking not
only from theory, but from practical experience, I am convinced that
complete openness on sexual subjects is the best way to prevent
children from thinking about them excessively, nastily, or
unwholesomely, and also the almost indispensable preliminary to an
enlightened sexual morality.

Where adult sexual behaviour is concerned, it is by no means easy to
arrive at a rational compromise between the antagonistic considerations
that have each their own validity. The fundamental difficulty is, of
course, the conflict between the impulse to jealousy and the impulse to
sexual variety. Neither impulse, it is true, is universal: there are those
(though they are few) who are never jealous, and there are those
(among men as well as among women) whose affections never wander
from the chosen partner. If either of these types could be made
universal, it would be easy to devise a satisfactory code. It must be
admitted, however, that either type can be made more common by
conventions designed to that end.

Much ground remains to be covered by a complete sexual ethic, but I
do not think we can say anything very positive
until we have more experience, both of the effects of various systems
and of the changes resulting from a rational education in matters of sex.
It is clear that marriage, as an institution, should only interest the State
because of children, and should be viewed as a purely private matter so
long as it is childless. It is clear, also, that, even where there are
children, the State is only interested through the duties of fathers,
which are chiefly financial. Where divorce is easy, as in Scandinavia,
the children usually go with the mother, so that the patriarchal family
tends to disappear. If, as is increasingly happening where wage-earners
are concerned, the State takes over the duties that have hitherto fallen
upon fathers, marriage will cease to have any raison d'être,
and will
probably be no longer customary except among the rich and the
religious.

In the meantime, it would be well if men and women could remember,
in sexual relations, in marriage, and in divorce, to practise the ordinary
virtues of tolerance, kindness, truthfulness, and justice. Those who, by
conventional standards, are sexually virtuous, too often consider
themselves thereby absolved from behaving like decent human beings.
Most moralists have been so obsessed by sex that they have laid much
too little emphasis on other more socially useful kinds of ethically
commendable conduct.